Incluindo quem? Um exame de indicadores socioeconômicos do Programa de Inclusão Social da USP

Abstract

In 2006, the University of São Paulo (USP) created the Social Inclusion Program of USP (named Inclusp, and its acronym in Portuguese), an added scoring system whose main purpose is to expand the number of students coming from public schools (PS) within the institution. However, one of the criticisms this program gets is that it would not be able to include students with socioeconomic profile very different from those who would pass the "vestibular" (in Brazil, it is an exam which classifies candidates to a university according to their score), regardless of the program's actions. Thus, the objective of this work is to obtain in-depth knowledge of some the Inclup's indicators, with the aim of providing a better answer to the question: who the program has been contributing to include in USP? More specifically, some socioeconomic data are examined from students who entered USP this way. We compared the socioeconomic profile, for the three most and least attractive degree courses, of students in general, of those coming from PS and, among them, of those who were admitted at USP as a result of getting a bonus granted by Inclusp. The analysis of the socioeconomic indicators shows that the program has contributed to include PS students from families with a family income lower than their peers who also come from a PS. Notwithstanding, it also points to the fact that there is no variation in the education level of the father between those two groups, which indicates that, whereas Inclusp helps reduce the economic disadvantage, it has not been able, generally speaking, of eliminating cultural obstacles that prevent or make it difficult the access of students from working class backgrounds to the University of Sao Paulo.